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Isn't this dangerous?

Muse

Muse

Lifer
I bought a portable FM radio off Amazon that was delivered a few days ago. I set it up yesterday, following the enclosed chopped English instructions, seemingly satisfactorily. I saw what is evidently the same device sold under a variety of brand names at Amazon, and I picked one with the lowest price.

Amazon.com: JESSON Personal AM FM Pocket Radio Portable Digital Tuning Stereo Radio with Earphone and Rechargeable Battery for Walk: Home Audio & Theater

Amazon.com: JESSON Personal AM FM Pocket Radio Portable Digital Tuning Stereo Radio with Earphone and Rechargeable Battery for Walk: Home Audio & Theater
www.amazon.com

It's selling for $17 now but I bought it for $15 on April 7.

They have a 500mah lithium ion battery. The instructions say to use a 1A to 3A charger with the supplied cable, completely standard. It says the battery symbol will flash while charging and stop flashing to indicate that the battery is fully charged, at which time you obviously remove the charging cable from the unit.

The battery symbol has 3 blocks, all three showing meaning that the battery's close to fully charged. When only one is showing, obviously it's getting close to being fully discharged. I noticed today that only one block was showing, so I put it on charge using a charger that supplies 2.5A. After two hours the symbol was still flashing and I became concerned. Obviously, a 500mah battery should have been fully charged in less than 15 minutes using this charger, a charger that's never given me trouble. I substituted another charger, rated at 2.1A. After 55 more minutes of charging that symbol is still flashing, not solid and unflashing.

I deduce that this is defective. I've heard of lithium ion batteries catching fire due to overcharging when the sophisticated systems designed to prevent overcharging fail for whatever reason. Isn't this device possibly dangerous?
 
A lot of these cheap Chinese products just put a set current directly across the battery terminals with zero BMS. VERY dangerous. They make lot of assumptions such as the user only plugging it in when it actually needs to be charged, and unplugging it after a certain time.

If the voltage stays below 4 volts per cell chances are nothing bad will happen though... I would be tempted to charge the battery separately on an actual lithium ion battery charger that does balancing and all that.
 
highland145 said:
Lol, China doesn't give a rats ass.
Click to expand...

Yeah and they're also not held liable for anything. The responsibility actually falls on you as the "importer". Which I think is BS that it works that way. If someone was to make the same device here it needs to pass CSA, ULC, ETL certifications etc and if something happens you're the one responsible, but yet China can flood our market with cheap crap without needing any of those certifications and the sellers are not liable.
 
Red Squirrel said:
If the voltage stays below 4 volts per cell chances are nothing bad will happen though... I would be tempted to charge the battery separately on an actual lithium ion battery charger that does balancing and all that.
Click to expand...

AFAIK, there's no way I can control the rate of charge, I mean use a charger designed for lithium ion batteries that will sense a full charge. I can't get at the battery itself without taking the device apart. It has a standard USB micro B port.

I posted this question on Amazon's page for the device just now:

I put on 2.5A charger and 2 hours later still flashing, then on 2.1A charger, 1 hour later still flashing. Inst. says it stops flashing when charged?
Click to expand...
 
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I have a mind to call Amazon, explain that the device doesn't behave as explained in the instructions and insist on a replacement or refund. At the same time I ordered this I ordered a different $15 portable FM radio that uses a couple of AAA's. That I much prefer, I always have charged Eneloops on hand.

Uses 2 AAA's:


Both radios sound great, actually the one with AAAs I like better because it has better stereo separation.
 
Probably a beat battery. Keep it, return it... It's $15. Not worth spending a lot of time thinking about. I already used ~$15 of effort reading this thread and responding.
 
lxskllr said:
Probably a beat battery. Keep it, return it... It's $15. Not worth spending a lot of time thinking about. I already used ~$15 of effort reading this thread and responding.
Click to expand...
Contrary to popular opinion time != money.

I'm not worried about it not working, I'm worried that it will burn my house to the ground!

Well, I just called Amazon and they emailed me a UPS shipping label. I'll be credited the purchase price back to my method of payment when they get it.

I'll just buy another of the ones that use AAA's, no worries about exploding lithium ion battery. That I don't need.
 
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Muse said:
My experience is that Amazon stands behind the products sold on their site. Lots of experiences.
Click to expand...


You misunderstand ... Amazon WILL refund you in a heartbeat. 😉

The not caring thing is completely accurate. They do not.

(in fact I'm kinda shocked you even have to ship the item back!)
 
Captante said:
You misunderstand ... Amazon WILL refund you in a heartbeat. 😉

The not caring thing is completely accurate. They do not.

(in fact I'm kinda shocked you even have to ship the item back!)
Click to expand...
The chick I just talked to was fine, I have no complaints. It's the robot you have to get past that royally pisses me off. I didn't used to have to deal with that. First thing the robot man's voice says they are experiencing unusual call volume. Never used to get that shit, could get a CSR is less than a minute, usually less.

Yeah, I was a bit taken aback about shipping it, but didn't complain. I'll swing over that way next week. Or maybe take a bike ride. My bank's over there, I'll hit them and swap the HD in my safe deposit box... it's all the data I give a fuck about.
 
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Red Squirrel said:
Yeah and they're also not held liable for anything. The responsibility actually falls on you as the "importer". Which I think is BS that it works that way. If someone was to make the same device here it needs to pass CSA, ULC, ETL certifications etc and if something happens you're the one responsible, but yet China can flood our market with cheap crap without needing any of those certifications and the sellers are not liable.
Click to expand...

If a business wants to do business with a sub-par source they can't control, well, that should be on the business. Unfortunately our corporate overlords decided profits over everything else and ran into China's arms at full sprint.
 
Muse said:
My experience is that Amazon stands behind the products sold on their site. Lots of experiences.
Click to expand...
'Refund for any reason' isn't the same as 'stand behind'.

There isn't some high power exec that's going to read whatever gets sent them about this product from you with a furrowed brow, and yell 'johnson, get me that random chinese company that made this product on the phone, we're going to have a talk!'. They'll literally just repackage it and sell it again.

The key is to not pay the lowest price for <thing that does a thing>, move up a smidge. What made you think that a fully functional recharchable electronic device should cost less than an Arduino board? I know it's 'just' a radio but it's not a ham sandwich.
 
Am I the only one wondering why someone would want to listen to the radio?

BTW, your phone can probably tune into radio stations when you plug in headphones.
 
It's not sold by Amazon, they are just providing the platform. I suspect they don't care since they are not liable.

Also, charge speed is not just dependant on your charger but also the device.
 
[DHT]Osiris said:
The key is to not pay the lowest price for <thing that does a thing>, move up a smidge. What made you think that a fully functional recharchable electronic device should cost less than an Arduino board? I know it's 'just' a radio but it's not a ham sandwich.
Click to expand...
My criteria were great reception, acceptable sound, no crackling, static, noise, dropouts. This is a learning experience. NOW, AFAIK, my only lithium ion products are my various smartphones (none of which have such issues, evidently, they were made by Nokia, LG, Samsung), several cordless hand tools. I just bought some of those and among those are two which have built in LI batteries. I will evaluate those and be careful with them.
 
Muse said:
My experience is that Amazon stands behind the products sold on their site. Lots of experiences.
Click to expand...

Only because it cheap for them to pretend to care about you compared to the $$$ they make selling cheap, shitty and/or dangerous Chinese products to Americans. It's one of the reasons I'm trying to move more and more of our purchases away from them - even if I pay a little more
 
Exterous said:
Only because it cheap for them to pretend to care about you compared to the $$$ they make selling cheap, shitty and/or dangerous Chinese products to Americans. It's one of the reasons I'm trying to move more and more of our purchases away from them - even if I pay a little more
Click to expand...
Care to be more specific? I realize that stuff on Amazon isn't necessarily great, but ebay is worse, apparently way worse. Amazon has better customer feedback and you can post questions and get answers before or after purchase and get customer and sometimes seller feedback. Amazon until last December supported customer (or anybody's!!!) response to reviews ("comments") but they suddenly and in my mind inexplicably pulled the plug on that excellent and very useful feature, which pissed me off no end. I started a thread here about it:

Amazon in their infinite wisdom decide to censor their own content /S

I'm reading the reviews on a product I just shopped and ultimately bought and saw a very helpful review and decided to add a comment. But where was the "Comment" button? Where oh where is my Comment button? :oops: I figure there may be some lurking feature gismo, whatever, and do a search...
forums.anandtech.com forums.anandtech.com
 
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